Posts tagged ‘Shaken Baby Syndrome’

Since early in his medical career, Mark Dias, M.D., F.A.A.P., F.A.A.N.S., professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at the College of Medicine, has spearheaded research exploring hospital-based and public policy interventions for decreasing the incidence of shaken baby syndrome, now more often referred to as abusive head trauma. “Abusive shaking and blunt impact to the head has a devastating impact on infants; if the child survives, he often is challenged to recover from severe brain injury and swelling, skull fracture, and retinal hemorrhage and damage,” says Dias.

As part of his strong commitment to protecting children from abuse, Dias has helped to form the Penn State Hershey Center for the Protection of Children. In 2009, Dias began working to grow a team of specialists at the Medical Center to evaluate and treat victims of child abuse and neglect. The child safety team began informally with the part-time support of Laura Duda, M.D., and Kathryn Crowell, M.D., R ’01, pediatricians who trained at children’s hospitals in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia as fellows in specialized pediatric child abuse medicine. In the summer of 2011, Andrea Taroli, M.D., a board-certified child abuse pediatric specialist, became the first director of the Penn State Hershey Center for the Protection of Children. (more…)

For new parents, caring for a crying baby can be very difficult, and often they are not aware of how frustrating it is until they are faced with a stressful situation. Sadly, research indicates that crying is the number one cause of physical abuse of infants, specifically Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS), also known as abusive head trauma (AHT). Statistics from the National Center on Shaken Baby Syndrome show that every year in the United States at least 1,200 to 1,400 children are shaken, and 25 to 30 percent of shaken babies die. Survivors of shaken baby syndrome often have lifelong complications, including brain damage, seizures, learning disabilities, and blindness.

The SBS Prevention Program was the brain child of Mark Dias, M.D., F.A.A.P., professor of neurosurgery, vice chair of clinical neurosurgery, and chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery, Penn State Hershey Medical Center. He began the parent education program in upstate New York in 1998. In 2002, he came to the Medical Center and under his guidance, the team developed his prevention model for education, which is completely nurse driven, into a program now widely recognized and embraced by maternal child health and neonatal intensive care nurses as well as child abuse prevention associations statewide. The program is funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Pennsylvania is the first state in the nation to have 100 percent of hospitals educating parents as per the Dias Model. (more…)